Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to raise this matter on the Adjournment concerning the Monageer tragedy in County Wexford. I want to raise in particular the fact that the psychiatric services were not involved in drawing up of the report. The key to the tragedy was the suicidal ideation and intention of Adrian Dunne and that of his wife. One can deduce from the report that she was heavily influenced by Mr. Dunne.

The report of the inquiry concluded that if the services had intervened with the family on the weekend of their deaths it is unlikely the tragedy would have been averted. I profoundly disagree with this assumption, however. Intervention should have taken place and the failure to complete a suicide risk assessment with Adrian Dunne had the most serious of consequences. The failure of the Government to invest in suicide prevention programmes again highlights its serious neglect in this area, which has tragic consequences for so many victims and their families through the country.

The decision of a person to take their life is complex and multifaceted. It is wrong and dangerous to attribute this terrible decision to one simple factor. A superficial suicidal risk assessment in relation to Mr. Dunne suggests a high possibility of serious suicide ideation and intention. The following issues, when combined, would lead one to such a conclusion. I wish to outline these ten issues as follows. First, he was a young father who was making detailed plans for his funeral and that of his family. This alarmed the funeral undertaker who was so concerned that the gardaí were notified. Second, Mr. Dunne was in mourning for his brother who took his life the previous month. Third, Mr. Dunne was mourning his father who died the previous year. Fourth, he had recently finalised his will. Fifth, he and his family were socially isolated. Sixth, he had intellectual and physical disabilities. Seventh, the family had a high level of engagement with health and social services. Eighth, he had unmanageable debts. Ninth, there has been an incidence of suicide-related tragedies in the Wexford area, which introduces a copy-cat dimension. Finally, another brother of Mr. Dunne's died in a car accident. He made reference to this in his conversation with the funeral director. He also spoke of eight different people who had been in accidents. It is accepted that some deaths on our roads are suicides.

This superficial assessment should alert the services that there was a high level of suicide ideation and that the victim was suffering deep psychological, emotional and-or psychiatric trauma. All the services available to save his life, including the psychiatric services, should have been engaged immediately. If this had happened, he and his family could have been saved. The fact that this did not happen, demonstrates again the serious neglect of funding services for people in crisis and allocating resources to develop suicide prevention proposals.

The Minister for State says that funding of €15 million to introduce the main recommendation of the report "is an issue at the moment" demonstrates the value placed on the lives of those who are suicidal. I repeat that the decision to take one's life is highly complex and there is no easy answer. Those who die by suicide do not intend to take their lives, but know of no other way to remove the deep psychological and sometimes physical pain which they are suffering. I am concerned that Mr. Dunne's psychiatric condition, including a suicidal tendency and psychological mindset, was not considered deeply by the inquiry into the tragedy. A psychiatric consultant should have been on the board of the investigation because this issue was such a key one in the tragedy.

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